Breed Clownfish | Saltwater Fish

[tembo45]

Do newly hatched fry need the light on all night in order to find rotifers? I have 250 newly hatched percula fry and they are feeding on rotifers, but I'm concern about the night period. How long should it be if I turn lights out for the night?

[admin]

Do not turn the lights out. They will need to be constantly eating and chasing food. I usually leave the lights on 24 hours / day. Once it is time to switch to brine shrimp they are usually old enough to start turning the lights out at night. Send pictures!:)

[tembo45]

They are 21 days old and 207 have survived. I'm wondering if I should quit the brine shrimp or keep feeding them. Also nitrate levels are too high and changing one third the water a day does not control it. I'm not sure what to do about that. I only take water from the adult reef tank and it is virtually no nitrate. Any thoughts. I'll post photos in a day or two.

[tembo45]

We continue to have over 200 babies that are now 24 days old. This photo was taken on day 21.

[admin]

I would start to try feeding them fry food. Your local fish store should have a fry food, usually for freshwater fish. It is almost a powder. You also could try grinding up some flake food very very fine and try feeding them that. You might have to feed it to them along with the brine shrimp to trick them into trying it. Once they try it a couple times they will get used to it and you shouldn't have to feed them the brine any more. As for the nitrate I would try to get the fry into a larger tank. As you know it doesn't take much to fowl the water when there isn't much water volume to begin with. See if you can get them into a larger "grow out" tank. Congrats you've done a great job getting them to this point!

[tembo45]

I have most of them in a 20 gallon tank with a biofilter and still I vacuum the tank once a day. I'm grinding flake food, krill and an algae flake in a coffee grinder and feed that and it works well. They're now off the brine shrimp at 25 days old and doing well. Some of them are still in the 10 gallon tank I used for the eggs originally. I start them on gel food in another day or two when it arrives. I added the algae flake when I noticed some with dark balls of fecal matter hanging from the anal pore and the higher veg diet seems to work. We still have about 203 babies of perhaps 350 or so at hatch. We haven't lost a baby in a week.

[tembo45]

There are 200 babies still doing well at 32 days but some are showing balls of fecal matter hanging from their anal area, so diet must still be a problem for some. They are feeding on gel food and flake algae all day now. I'll post a 30 day photo of them as well.

[tembo45]

These are 30 days old and growing well, but at different rates. Some are twice as large as others.

[admin]

I have seen that happen with gel food. I would stick to the flake and maybe try some frozen foods ie. mysis and marine cuisine. Congrats on your success. You really had a good survival rate it appears.

--Scott

[tembo45]

The babies are now about 47 days old and more than 190 have survived. I lose one weak one about every three days, but overall they are doing well. I've continued the gel food but I feed flake twice a day and an algae flake twice a day which seems to have kept the compaction problem from being deadly. I added a biofilter to each of the two tanks when the babies were one month old and I no longer had fears of them being drawn into the filter system. I still vacuum the tank and add new water from the parent tank every other day. Key points learned in all this.
• Move rock with eggs to separate tank at five or six days just before the fry hatch
• Aerate the eggs well and watch out for bristle worms and brittle stars emerging from the rock that first night. Remove them quickly.
• Order rotifers as the eggs are laid and start two five gallon colonies with the newly arrived rotifers immediately.
• Add rotifers the morning fry begin to hatch and keep density of them up so literally every fry is surrounded by rotifers to eat.
• Start adding brine shrimp on day five and phase out rotifers at day ten
• Start flake ground in a food blender as feed as rotifers are phased out.
• Start krill food and continue flake, but phase out brine shrimp at day 22 or 23.
• Add gel food at day 30 by suspending from a nylon string while continuing with ground flake.

I'll post photos again at two months. I made many abortive attempts to raise clown babies before this successful one. I have a commercial book by Frank Hoff on raising clownfish that is way too technical but the feeding chart in it has helped. (Conditioning, spawning and rearing of fish with emphasis on marine clownfish.)

Tim